Why Incentives Are a Tool of the Lazy Manager

"Let's create an incentive plan!" 

That's the rallying cry for lazy managers. Whether its lagging customer service survey scores, poor productivity, or dismal attendance, lazy managers think the solution is an an incentive.

Or perhaps a disincentive will do the trick! 

A three strikes and yer out sort of thing where bad employees receive marks on their permanent employment record which shouldn't really be called permanent because we all know that employee won't be there for very long anyway.

Why are incentives a tool of lazy managers? 

The short answer is incentives represent an apparent quick fix, which is tempting to a manager who doesn't want to put in the real work.

Here's a deeper look.

Who is Actually Motivated?

In a 1968 Harvard Business Review article, psychologist Frederick Herzberg made an interesting observation about incentives.

It's the manager who is motivated, not necessarily the employee.

A manager might be motivated to improve customer service survey scores. Perhaps it's part of her job review or she's catching some flak from senior leadership. Maybe the manager is competitive and just wants her department to have the best score.

Whatever the reason, she's desperate for results so she creates an incentive for employees who receive good survey scores.

But what about the employees?

The employees aren't really motivated to deliver better service. Better service isn't even part of the incentive. The incentive focuses on good survey scores, which is a crucial distinction.

So the employees might be motivated to earn the incentive. And some will step outside the lines to do it, even resorting to survey begging.

 

What the Lazy Manager Misses

A motivated employee wants to do something.

If employees are motivated to deliver better customer service, they'll willingly put in extra effort and find their way around obstacles. Motivated employees will look at poor customer service survey scores as an opportunity to learn and get better, not a disastrous set-back in their quest to earn an incentive.

The lazy manager doesn't see this. 

In my experience, the lazy manager will tell employees that survey scores need to improve. She'll announce the incentive and she might explain why improvement is important to her. ("My boss is really upset about our latest survey scores!")

But she won't explain why the improvement is important to the employees, the company, or even the customers. She also won't make a connection between her goals and what the employees want to achieve.

Lazy managers leave out the "Why?" completely when organizing an incentive plan.

They're too lazy to investigate what's causing lower survey scores. They don't take the time to involve and engage employees. They just want quick action.

 

A Better Way

Let's say you have an attendance problem.

The lazy manager will resort to an incentive (perfect attendance awards!) or a disincentive. Many customer service teams have elaborate attendance policies that make your head spin. And every one of those managers complains about employees who abuse the policy and do just enough to keep their job.

There's a better way.

  • What if you made work a place employees wanted to come to?

  • What if you had a customer service vision that gave employees a clear purpose?

  • What if you hired people who wanted to do what you wanted them to do?

The problem with this plan is it takes time. The benefit is it works.

Daniel Pink decoded many myths of about employee motivation in his best-selling book, Drive. He discovered that employees really crave three things:

  1. Purpose. There's got to be a point to all this work.

  2. Mastery. We want the ability to be good at what we do.

  3. Autonomy. It's good to have some measure of control over the work we perform.

(You can read a review of the book and it's application to customer service here.)

The short version is lazy managers won't take that time. They'll look for a shortcut and that shortcut is usually an incentive.

When I did research for The Service Culture Handbook, I never once heard a customer service leader talk about incentives as the key to a customer-focused culture. What I did consistently hear was leaders describing building a great service culture as a time-consuming task that required long-term commitment. 

These managers achieved success because they were willing to put in the extra work.

The Powerful Survey Feature That Drives Customer Loyalty

Improving loyalty is a big reason companies survey customers.

The challenge is finding ways to actually accomplish that goal. Customer service leaders tell me confidentially that analyzing survey data is a struggle. Getting leaders to take meaningful action is another tough task.

There's one survey feature that can immediately improve your results. Seriously, you could implement it today and start reducing customer defections.

What is it? 

It's the contact opt-in. Here's a run-down on what it is, why it's essential, and how to implement it immediately.

What is a Contact Opt-In?

A contact opt-in is a feature at the end of your customer service survey that allows customers to opt-in for a follow-up contact.

The opt-in does three important things:

  • It allows you to follow-up with an upset customer and save their business.

  • The survey itself remains anonymous, which is important to some customers.

  • The opt-in doesn't promise a contact, it just gives you the option.

Best of all, it's really simple. Here's a sample opt-in:

May we contact you if we have additional questions?

Just make sure you add fields to capture a customer's name and contact information if they say yes!

 

Why are Follow-ups Essential?

There's a widely held perception among customers that surveys are meaningless.

That's because we're inundated with survey requests, but we rarely see any meaningful changes as a result of our feedback. Many customers are convinced their feedback is routinely ignored. (Spoiler alert: they're right.)

A follow-up tells customers you're listening. It demonstrates caring and empathy. Some customers have told me they were surprised and amazed to get a follow-up contact!

Now here's the best part: you might even be able to solve the problem and save the customer!

Data provided by the customer feedback analysis company, Thematic, shows that customers who give a "0" rating on Net Promoter Surveys have a lot more to say in the comment section than customers who give other ratings:

Data source: Thematic

Data source: Thematic

“Detractors across dozens of companies we’ve worked with complain about the inability to contact the company about an issue they have, lack of communication, or difficulty finding information on how to fix an issue themselves”, says Alyona Medelyan, CEO at Thematic. “We have also observed that many customers leave their full name, phone number or reference number in a free-text comment. Detractors are three times more likely to leave contact details than others.”

This presents customer service leaders with two choices:

You can ignore all that anger and wait for the customer to tell family, friends, and colleagues or you can contact the customer and try to iron things out.

 

How to Implement a Contact Opt-In

The process is very straight forward.

  1. Add a contact opt-in to the end of your survey.

  2. Review your survey for opt-ins (I recommend daily).

  3. Contact as many customers as possible, especially angry ones.

Through trial and error, I've found that a phone call often works better than email or other channels for following up. It's easier to have a dialogue if you catch them on the phone and a surprising number of customers will call you back if you leave a message and a phone number where they can call you directly.

Here are a few other tips:

  • Empower your follow-up person (or team) to resolve as many issues as possible.

  • Use customer conversations to learn more about their situation.

  • Summarize feedback from customer follow-ups to identify broad trends.

 

Conclusion

Some leaders worry about the time required. If that's your focus, your head's probably not in the right place.

Here are three compelling reasons why you definitely have the time:

  1. Follow-up is optional. You don't have to contact every single customer.

  2. Saving customers can directly generate revenue and reduce servicing costs.

  3. Fixing chronic problems leads to fewer customer complaints in the long run.

Here are some additional resources to help you turn your survey into a feedback-generating, customer-saving, money-making machine:

How to Choose the Right Customer Service Metrics

"What are the best metrics for my customer service team?"

It's a question I'm frequently asked. In some environments, like contact centers, leaders have access to so much data it can be overwhelming. In other situations, customer service leaders don't feel they have enough data.

So let's settle one question right here: there's no single metric that's best for every situation.

The trick is to figure out which metrics will be most useful for you, your team, and your business. It's like being a detective who is looking for clues to solve a mystery. The clues themselves only make sense when they help you crack the case. (Now is a good time to think about exactly what case you're trying to solve!)

Here's a guide to help you pick the right metrics along with a few caveats.

Ask Questions, Then Find Data

The biggest mistake customer service managers make when selecting metrics is they think about metrics first without considering what problem they're trying to solve.

You'll be much better off by asking a few questions and then finding metrics that provide an answer. Here are three questions that can help:

1. What does your boss care about? By boss, I really mean the executive that the customer service function reports to. Executives usually have a hot button issue that they're very concerned about. For example, I recently had the metrics conversation with a customer service leader when he showed me an email from his company's president discussing a customer retention problem.

I advised this leader to look for metrics that were directly connected to retention. Were customers more likely to defect if they experienced a particular issue, contacted the company a certain number of times, or had to wait a certain period of time for service? It will take some digging to find the answer, but when he does, this leader will be able to help solve a problem his company's president cares about.

Find a business issue your boss really cares about and then find a metric that describes how your team can help. 

 

2. What is your customer service vision? Elite customer service teams have a shared definition of outstanding service called a customer service vision. (If you don't have one yet, create one with this handy guide.) 

It's helpful to have a metric that tells you how well your service is meeting your vision. This is often a customer service survey (here's a guide for that), but it doesn't have to be. A wholesaler client of mine uses order accuracy as a key metric because of the headaches that inaccurate orders cause its retail customers. Mistakes on orders also cost the company money to fix, so there's a direct financial incentive to improve as well.

 

3. How do you evaluate individual contribution? At some point, you'll need to decide how you'll evaluate individual performance. The counterintuitive trend is to find metrics that evaluate behaviors rather than outcomes.

Why?

Let's say you want to evaluate employees by their average customer service survey score, which is an outcome of a service interaction. The challenge is you may find employees doing things you don't want them to do to make their metrics look good. One of the worst behaviors is survey begging, where an employee pleads with a customer to give a good survey score.

A better approach is to focus on the behaviors that drive good survey scores. For example, perhaps you notice an employee doesn't offer a warm greeting 37 percent of the time. You know first impressions are key to customer satisfaction, so you have a coaching discussion about greeting customers the right way. Help the employee improve their performance and you'll see survey scores go up.

 

A Few Caveats

Here are a few lessons about goal-setting that I've learned the hard way.

  1. Fewer is better. The more metrics you track, the harder it is to focus on any one thing. Here's a short video that demonstrates how difficult it is to focus on multiple items.

  2. Existing data is better than new data. It generally takes a lot of effort to collect new data to feed your metrics, so you can be more efficient if you first try to use the data you already have.

  3. Set good goals, not bad ones. We often set goals around key metrics. That's OK, but make sure your goals fit the good goal criteria if you want to drive the right behaviors.

Simple Training Plan: Serving Upset Customers 101

UPDATED: June 14, 2023

I often get calls from customer service leaders who want to do some training for their team, but face a few challenges:

  • Budgets are limited.

  • It's an operational nightmare to get everyone scheduled into a class.

  • A single workshop won't produce sustainable results.

That's why I'm experimenting with a series of training plans that take a novel approach. They're inexpensive, easy to implement, and they produce lasting change.

Best of all, you can implement them without hiring an expensive consultant or trainer like me. The first topic is my most requested: Serving Upset Customers 101.

Overview: Serving Upset Customers 101

Participants will be able to do the following at the end of this training:

  • Recognize natural instincts that make it difficult to serve angry customers

  • Listen to upset customers with empathy

  • Retain more customers by neutralizing negative emotions

The course is designed to minimize disruption of normal work schedules:

  • Short weekly team meetings

  • Individual, self-paced assignments between meetings

This course is the first in a three part series:

Resources Required:

  • Worksheet: Workshop Planning Tool, cost: $0

  • Training Video: Working with Upset Customers. You'll need a LinkedIn Learning subscription for each participant. (You'll get access to the ENTIRE library, which is a huge bonus.)

  • Exercise Files: The Working with Upset Customers training video comes with a set of downloadable exercise files to help implement concepts from the course. You can access the files once you login.

Time Required: <1 hour per week for 4 weeks.

 

Pre-Work: Do This Before You Begin

You can boost the impact of any training program by properly preparing. Here are two simple assignments you should do before starting the training.

Assignment #1: Create a training plan. Use the Workshop Planning Tool to create a training plan:

  • Identify your goal for the training.

  • Determine what needs to be done to prepare for success.

  • Create a plan to sustain your progress.

Assignment #2: Announce the Training. Tell your team what to expect by announcing the training via a team meeting, one-on-one conversation, email, or some other form of communication. Make sure you address three things:

  • Tell participants what the training is about.

  • Explain why the training is important.

  • Share how you expect participants to use the training in their daily work.

 

Training Plan: Serving Upset Customers

This plan is divided into four lessons that each take place one week apart.

Week 1: Kick-off. Call a 30 minute team meeting to kick off the training program. Hold it in-person or via Zoom, Teams, or another web conference platform if your team is remote.

  1. Review the purpose and goals for this course.

  2. Discuss situations where customers get angry.

  3. Assign training videos and activities for the next meeting.

Participant assignments for next week:

  • Watch video: Helping the customer be right

  • Watch video: Recognizing your natural instincts

  • Exercise: Find the Fight or Flight Symptoms Checklist in the packet of downloadable exercise files (you'll need to be logged in to access this). Use it to identify one situation where you experience the Fight or Flight instinct while serving a customer.

 

Week 2: Recognizing Our Instincts. Call a 30 minute team meeting to check-in on the training program. Hold it in-person or via Zoom, Teams, or another web conference platform if your team is remote.

  1. Discuss the importance of helping customers be right.

  2. Discuss situations where we experienced the Fight or Flight Instinct.

  3. Assign training videos and activities for the next meeting.

Participant assignments for next week:

  • Watch video: Listening with empathy

  • Watch video: Apologizing effectively

  • Complete the Empathy Worksheet from the Exercise files.

  • Complete the Apology Worksheet from the Exercise files.

  • Apply the LAURA and apology techniques when serving an angry customer.

 

Week 3: Empathizing With Customers. Call a 30 minute team meeting to check-in on the training program. Hold it in-person or via Zoom, Teams, or another web conference platform if your team is remote.

  1. Discuss situations where participants used the LAURA technique to express empathy.

  2. Revisit list of situations where customers get angry (from Week 1). Discuss the root cause of each one.

  3. Assign training videos and activities for the next meeting.

Participant assignments for next week:

 

Week 4: Conclusion. Call a 30 minute team meeting to check-in on the training program. Hold it in-person or via Zoom, Teams, or another web conference platform if your team is remote.

  1. Discuss situations where participants helped a customer become right. 

  2. Discuss situations where participants used the acknowledge and refocus technique.

  3. Discuss appropriate actions if a customer becomes abusive.

  4. Discuss ways to sustain the learning.

Five Characteristics of a Powerful Customer Survey

Customer are constantly getting pummeled with survey requests.

We get them via email. They pop up when we visit a website. The auto mechanic pulls us aside after an oil change and begs us for a 10.

A 2016 study from Interaction Metrics found that more than 80 percent of America's top retailers offered a customer survey on purchase receipts. The study also found that most surveys were total garbage.

Most customer service leaders I know are concerned about their surveys. They recognize customers get too many. Leaders also aren't certain what to do with the data they're collecting.

This post aims to solve that problem. 

Below are five characteristics of a powerful customer survey. Use them to put your existing survey to the test. And, if you want more help, I'm willing to do an evaluation of your existing survey at no cost or obligation (details at the end of the post).

#1 Purpose

Always start with why. Understand why you want to survey your customers. Whenever possible, be specific.

Customer service leaders typically respond by saying, "We want to collect feedback." That's not enough. It doesn't provide clear direction because there's no action involved.

Here's a better reason I recently heard from a customer service leader:

Customer retention is a key driver of our company's success. We want to use our survey to help pinpoint the causes of customer churn.

See the difference? A clear purpose will help you use the survey to drive action.

 

#2 Choose the Correct Format

There's a lot of debate around which type of survey is best. Here are the three most popular:

  • Customer Satisfaction (CSAT): measures customer satisfaction with a product, service, or transaction.

  • Net Promoter Score (NPS): measures a customer's likelihood to recommend your product or service.

  • Customer Effort Score (CES): measures how easy it was for a customer to resolve their issue.

So here's a secret: there's no single survey type that's best!

Choosing the wrong survey type can yield less helpful data, so it's important to choose the correct survey type to match your goal.

A municipal utility probably shouldn't use an NPS survey because they have a monopoly on their service so generating positive word-of-mouth isn't the goal. The utility would be better off using a CES survey to find ways to serve their customers more efficiently.

Here's a primer that can help you decide which survey is best for your situation.

 

#3 Ask the Right Questions

A survey is only as useful as the questions it contains.

Most surveys contain too many questions. Those questions are frequently poorly designed and do little to reveal useful information.

You can ask better questions if you keep a few things in mind:

  • What's your purpose for doing the survey? (See #1 above)

  • What type of survey are you using? (See #2 above)

  • What will you do with the data?

If you don't know what you will do with the answer to a question, there's no need to ask it. In fact, I challenge my clients to use just three questions whenever possible:

  1. How would you rate (product, service, experience)?

  2. Why did you give that rating? (open text response)

  3. May we follow-up with you if we have additional questions?I challenge my clients to 

This short explainer reveals the rationale behind each of these questions (and why you usually don't need any more).

 

#4 Make Your Survey Easy

Offering a survey is really asking a customer to do you a favor.

The easier you make your survey, the more likely your customer is to do you that favor and to feel okay doing it. This means your surveys should follow a few simple principles:

  • Easy to access

  • Offered in a timely manner

  • Easy (and quick) to complete

A 2011 study from SurveyMonkey found that survey completion rates drop 5-20 percent once a survey takes 7+ minutes to complete. The same study discovered that's usually around 10 questions.

 

#5 Take Action

The number one survey gripe I hear from customers is the survey doesn't matter. 

Truthfully, they're usually right. Studies consistently show the vast majority of survey feedback is never acted upon.

You need to use surveys to drive improvement if you want to avoid wasting your customers' time. That means analyzing the data for trends and identifying opportunities for improvement.

Your survey serves no purpose if you're not doing that.

 

Resources

Here are a few more resources to help you improve your existing customer survey or implement a new one.

Training Video: Using Customer Surveys to Improve Service

If you don't have a subscription to either source, you can get a 30-day Lynda.com trial account by dropping my name.

You might also want to check out my customer service survey resource page.

Finally, here's my offer to review your survey:

Send your survey as a link or PDF file to jeff [at] toistersolutions [dot] com by June 30, 2017. In your email, answer these three questions:

  1. What is your objective for this survey?

  2. How are you offering the survey? (Ex: via email to customers who contact you)

  3. What are you doing with the survey data?

I'll respond with notes about your survey's strengths and some suggestions for improvement.

Lessons From The Overlook: Experience Your Customers' Experience

Note: Lessons from The Overlook is a monthly update on lessons learned from owning a vacation rental property in the Southern California mountain town of Idyllwild. It's a hands-on opportunity to apply some of the techniques I advise my clients to use. You can find past updates here.

Guest experience was initially a blind spot at The Overlook.

When we bought the property last October, our property manager did a property walk-through with us and gave her assessment. That was helpful, but we didn't have a lot of data other than that.

How were we going to find out what our guests liked or disliked? Or how we could make their stay align with our customer service vision, Welcome to your mountain community retreat?

Most people would default to a guest survey. We did that (through our property manager), but we also used two techniques that are arguably more powerful in this situation: experience and observation.

Here's what we did and how you can use these concepts, too.

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Experience Your Product or Service

The first thing we did when we bought The Overlook was spend a weekend.

The house was already a vacation rental and it was sold turnkey, which meant it came fully furnished. What we didn't know was whether those furnishings were adequate.

You can learn a lot when you experience your product or service the way a customer would. For example, it might be easy to miss a few burned out lightbulbs if you weren't relaxing at the dining table underneath your faux-antler chandelier.

So we tried to experience everything a guest would experience. We slept in each bedroom, used each bathroom, cooked in the kitchen, watched TV, and used the internet. We even brought our dog to see how comfortable she would be.

This experience allowed us to experience The Overlook the way a guest would experience it. We might not represent every guest, but we could still use empathetic insight to imagine what guests might like and what they probably wouldn't.

Then we made a list of everything we felt was sub-par and made improvements. We went back a few times over the next several weeks to make updates and complete some minor repairs. 

A few weeks later, we returned once again. This time we booked our stay through our property manager's website. We wanted to experience the entire reservation process and then see what it was like when The Overlook was prepped for guests.

It's amazing how many small things you can discover this way. For example, we noticed we often had to find creative ways to store leftovers after cooking a meal. We figured our guests would feel the same way, so we added some extra tupperware to the kitchen.

Lesson Learned: Try mystery shopping your own business so you can experience a product or service the way a customer would. You might notice opportunities for improvement from a whole new perspective.

 

Observe How Customers Use Your Product or Service

Another exercise we did was to visit The Overlook several times immediately after guests checked out.

Our timing was critical because our property manager inspects the property after each stay and then sends a cleaning crew in to clean the house so it's ready for the next guests.

Our goal was to see the cabin before the inspection. We wanted to see it exactly our our guests left it. In particular, we looked for four things:

  • What was dirty?

  • What was moved?

  • What was damaged?

  • What was missing?

This exercise gave us insight into how our guests used the cabin. Here are some examples:

We got clues about how guests used the kitchen by what was dirty and what had been moved from it's original location. This helped us better organize and stock the kitchen.

One particular vase was always moved from its original location. This signaled to us that it was in our guests' way. They were likely moving it to make more room for their stuff, so we just removed it completely.

Plates and glasses sometimes get damaged, too. Some guests will notify our property manager, but other guests will try to hide the damaged dish in a cupboard or fail to mention a broken glass. Looking for those items allows us to replace them.

Lesson Learned: Observe how your guests use your product or service. You'll almost certainly gain insight that you'd never get from a survey.

 

Conclusion

It's always good to have data from multiple sources. We look at our guest survey data and combine it with our experience and observation data. 

For instance, our guest observations tell us that the typical guest uses 75-100% of the bath towels. That's not surprising since we provide eight sets of towels, our max capacity is eight, and we tend to get a lot of groups that size.

Our survey revealed that guests would like even more towels because they often shower after a sweaty hike and then use the hot tub later in the evening. Using the same towel more than once in a day get leave it feeling a bit soggy.

We're working on that one now.

How Shake Shack Stands for Something Good

It was 10:55am and there was already a line.

I was standing outside Shake Shack's Theatre District location in New York City with my friend, Jenny Dempsey. She was working nearby at the time and I was in town for a conference, so this was a rare opportunity to meet up. 

Jenny co-authors the fabulous Customer Service Life blog, which meant we naturally had to visit a place that offers outstanding customer service. Jenny suggested Shake Shack, but warned that we needed to get there early. "Tables fill up fast," she said.

The employees' friendliness immediately struck me when the doors opened at 11. They smiled, looked you in the eye, and seemed genuinely happy. The restaurant quickly crowded, but that friendliness must have been contagious, because guests were friendly, too.

Oh, and the burgers were as delicious as advertised.

It was a great introduction to a restaurant chain that was already legendary in New York City and was rapidly expanding. But I left wondering how a busy fast-casual chain could create an oasis of friendliness and welcome in the heart of New York City.

As I later learned, it all starts with vision.

That's Al Roker in the bottom right corner, getting ready to hand out samples of his Roker Burger to Shake Shack customers in Madison Square Park.

That's Al Roker in the bottom right corner, getting ready to hand out samples of his Roker Burger to Shake Shack customers in Madison Square Park.

Meet The Roker Burger

On my second visit to Shake Shack, I took my mother-in-law, Mabeth, and my wife, Sally. 

The three of us were touring New York City and I wanted them to experience the phenomenon. We decided to visit the original location in Madison Square Park.

Just like my first visit, the employees were friendly and engaging. We also had an extra treat in store for us this time. A film crew was setting up in the park.

We soon learned it was a Today Show film crew. 

Al Roker appeared and began filming a segment. He had teamed up with Shake Shack to create a unique hamburger called The Roker Burger. We watched as Roker went through the line handing out samples and conducting a taste test. 

It was a great New York City moment. We enjoyed tasty burgers, received friendly and engaging service, and saw a celebrity filming a segment for a television show. I even used up a few seconds of my 15 minutes of fame when I appeared in the background of the clip. (At 2:33)

The Roker Burger ended up raising $20,000 for No Kid Hungry. 

 

The Shake Shack Vision

All of the things I described in my experiences come from Shake Shack's customer service vision, Stand For Something Good.

A customer service vision is a shared definition of outstanding service that guides the actions of all employees throughout the company.

This vision is evident in everything Shake Shack does.

Restaurant locations are carefully selected and designed to become part of the local neighborhood. Prospective employees are screened for friendly, outgoing attitudes, and then given constant encouragement to connect with guests. Food is carefully sourced to maintain quality and then prepared with an exacting process to ensure a consistent taste. Employees are given extensive training and then empowered to create great guest experiences.

Even the Roker Burger fits the vision. 

For Shake Shack, part of Stand For Something Good includes donating to local charities and organizing company volunteers to help feed the hungry, mentor kids, and clean up parks in the community.

 

The Secret of Alignment

Shake Shack is featured in Chapter 5 of The Service Culture Handbook because the company emulates the concept of alignment so well.

Yes, Shake Shack's customer-focused culture starts with the Stand For Something Good vision. You can use this guide to create a vision for your organization or team.

But the vision becomes real by aligning all aspects of company operations around it. While most organizations struggle to implement a vision because leaders treat it like a side project, Shake Shack's leadership has made the vision a central part of every decision.

You can test your organization or team's alignment using this simple assessment.

The results can help you start the conversation internally about where to start improving customer-focus and employee engagement.

How to Empathize With Customers 

The airline passenger was angry about missing her flight.

It was her fault. She had been sitting at the bar a short distance from the gate and lost track of time. Those things happen in Las Vegas.

Our emotions often rise up to protect our ego, so she looked for someone to blame. The first gate agent she talked to explained the airline's boarding policies and maintained that he had made several boarding announcements. It was a perfectly rational and reasonable explanation, but it wasn't the validation she wanted. So the passenger exploded—ranting, raving, and cursing.

Another gate agent calmly took her aside.

He listened patiently as she told her story. He didn't try to argue with her or make her feel stupid. The gate agent used the partner technique to shift his body language so it was non-adversarial. He listened.

Then he simply said, "I can understand why you're angry. You shouldn't have to feel this way." 

The passenger quickly calmed down and thanked him. She accepted an offer to get re-booked on a later flight.

The gate agent accomplished this minor service miracle through empathy.

Empathy Defined

Empathy is a core skill in customer service.

Customers often experience negative emotions. When that happens, the rational part of our brain cedes control and can't function properly. Everything stops until those emotions cool down.

Empathy is the magic that can take angry customers out of the red. Here's how dictionary.com defines empathy:

the psychological identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.

When you empathize with a customer, it makes the customer feel better. Notice the airline gate agent wasn't agreeing with the passenger. He didn't say, "You're right, we should have sent someone to find you in the bar." What he did communicate was "I understand how you feel, and it's okay to have those feelings." He then took steps to help her feel better.

Of course, this is what makes empathy so difficult.

How do you empathize with someone you can't relate to? Unless you've missed a flight because you've lost track of time in a bar at the Las Vegas airport, it feels like a stretch to put yourself in this woman's shoes. 

Fortunately, there is a technique you can use.

 

Three Steps to Empathy

Here's a technique I've taught customer service professionals for many years.

Step 1: Consider why the customer is truly angry. For the airline passenger, there were three issues. She was stressed about missing her flight and being inconvenienced by a delay. She was embarrassed that she caused the issue. And she was upset about the lack of empathy from the first gate agent.

Step 2: Think about a time you felt the same way. Try to imagine a situation where you were angry or embarrassed about something that was your fault. We've all done something stupid. It may not have been missing a flight, but it was something.

Step 3: Use that experience to identify with your customer's feelings. When we feel angry and embarrassed, the last thing we want is to hear is its our fault. (That's the mistake the first gate agent made.) We want someone to tell us they hear us, that we're not so dumb after all, and that they would be happy to help us fix it.

This isn't an easy technique. I've seen many seasoned customer service professionals struggle with it. But think of the accomplishment if you can master it!

That airline gate agent used empathy to de-escalate what was quickly becoming a scene. He didn't just make himself look good, he represented his airline well.

And the passenger?

Some opportunistic by-stander swooped in and told her he saw the whole thing. He too empathized with her situation and then offered to buy her a drink at the bar.

That's Vegas for you.